The National Institutes of Health Toolbox is part of the NIH Blueprint initiative. It seeks to assemble brief, comprehensive assessment tools that will be useful in a variety of settings with a particular emphasis on measuring outcomes in epidemiologic studies and clinical trials across the lifespan.

NIH Toolbox Overview:

The ultimate goal is to help improve communication within and between fields of biomedical research and advance knowledge by using common data elements. The consists of surveys of Positive Affect, General Life Satisfaction, Emotional Support, Friendship, Loneliness, Perceived Rejection, Perceived Hostility, Self-Efficatcy, Sadness, Perceived Stress, Fear, and Anger.

Time:

The evaluation will take approximately 12-22 minutes to administer.

Scoring:

There are individual scores provided for each measure, there are no composite score.

Other Important Notes:

The battery is designed to measure these domains in ages 3 through 85.

Sport-Related Concussion-Specific: Advantages: The NIH Toolbox Sensory Battery has shown to be methodologically sound and is available in English and Spanish. Has already been validated in TBI population. Can be modified and updated in the future without losing the continuity or comparability of previously collected data (Gershon et al., 2010).

Limitations: Has to be completed by clinician (physician, therapist, nurse, psychologist, social worker). Also, some training is required as well as videotape. There might be some problems with use in subjects with cognitive or communication disabilities who may be unable to answer the battery of questions independently or be unreliable in their answers. Also, it needs to be validated in a sports concussion population (Quadrano & Cruz, 2011).